Chapter 32: Laughing Gas Party [5]
Chapter 32: Laughing Gas Party [5]
Far more students than expected were enthusiastic about having a healthy tooth pulled. Besides my friends Joseph and Alfred, the others were also raising their hands with eager faces. Doctor Robert Liston looked at them with great satisfaction.
To me, standing one step away from them—no, psychologically speaking, farther away than the Milky Way—it was simply a horrifying sight.
Good grief….
A professor telling people to volunteer to have a healthy tooth pulled, and students getting excited over such a ridiculous, insane demand.
This really did feel like… another world…. Well, I supposed that was the more natural conclusion.
It made me think that once I gained more power and more money, I really needed to look into it properly.
No matter how I thought about it, this place felt like Earth No. 10298.
There was no way the nineteenth century of the Earth I had lived on had been like this….
“Good, then all of you come forward. We’ll decide it with a manly contest.”
Regardless of my concerns, things were moving right along.
More than ten students had already come out and crowded together.
In the middle of that, Doctor Robert Liston proposed wrestling as the manly contest.
“What do you say? It’s not punching and kicking, so there’s no real danger of serious injury.”
Professor….
Isn’t that only because you’re the professor?
I feel like we ought to hear from the other side too….
Wrestling… just looking at it, it seemed like someone would obviously get hurt, didn’t it? Or not?
But after thinking about it, the wrestling I had seen in the Olympics did seem like a pure sport of strength and skill.
“All right, then. Begin.”
Of course, that thought completely vanished a moment later.
“Urk.”
“Ugh!”
This lunatic… he’s kicking with his feet.
This is wrestling… right?
He’s attacking the legs?
No matter how ignorant I was about sports, even I knew wrestling was not supposed to look like that.
I looked at Robert Liston with a face that clearly said, Isn’t that a foul? But the man only wore an expression of mild interest.
No matter how I looked at it, he seemed incapable of distinguishing wrestling from a neighborhood dogfight.
“Aaaah! I won!”
But that was not the pressing matter.
Joseph.
My close friend, who was over 176 centimeters tall.
A guy who had been a pretty decent brawler back in Upton.
He had just beaten one opponent and was roaring in triumph.
Had he forgotten that the end result would be having a healthy tooth pulled?
“Hey, hey.”
So while the others were still competing, I went over and spoke to him.
“Hm? What is it?”
Wrapped up in the excitement of the fight, he turned his reddened eyes toward me.
He was my friend, but he was a little scary.
Which was understandable.
I was just average height.
And besides, I had seen this guy fight quite a few times.
If he had been born in the Middle Ages, he probably could have secured a post under Lord Robert Liston himself.
“What kind of honor is there in getting your tooth pulled that you’re going this far for it?”
“It means contributing to the advancement of medicine.”
Contributing….
Did you really have to hurt your body to do that?
I let out a sigh.
“In Joseon, there’s a saying about the Five Blessings.”
Ancestors, please forgive me.
Just this once—no, I couldn’t promise what might happen in the future, so I’d probably have to sell you out quite a lot.
I did not mean any harm, so surely that was all right?
“The Five Blessings?”
“Yes. Teeth are included in that.”
To be exact, they were in and out of it depending on the version.
I had a feeling the yangban did not pay much attention to things like that anyway.
In any case, since there was no one here who would know, did that really matter?
“Hm… the Five Blessings means something good, right?”
“Of course. They’re the five blessings in life. Anyway, what I mean is… teeth are incredibly important.”
“But isn’t that just how Joseon sees it?”
No, you fool.
Do you know how important teeth are?
Nineteenth-century Britain might not have been an age where people lived to one hundred, but for someone as well-off as Joseph, living to sixty should have been easy enough.
No, honestly, if he stayed with me, he could live far longer than that.
Why?
Because unless it was cancer, this was an era where infectious diseases could absolutely be avoided.
So just imagine how important teeth would be.
“But still… you know this too. In Joseon, sayings don’t exist for no reason. We borrowed handwashing too, remember? And look what happened. The death toll dropped dramatically.”
“That is true. Hm….”
“And even if surgery can be done with laughing gas… honestly, it’ll be Doctor Liston who becomes famous. What fame is the man who loses the tooth going to get?”
What kind of experiment made the clinical test subject famous?
There was no way.
It made no sense.
“Is that so….”
“It is. Ah, right. Senior Alfred’s been eliminated.”
It seemed Joseph was starting to come around, so I had been thinking I might need to persuade Alfred next, but that turned out to be unnecessary.
Colin, who had been knocked flat by me yesterday, came over late and, through pure furious stubbornness, managed to beat a senior who was a full year above him.
Then he glared at me, but that was bearable.
That bastard could only glare, but yesterday I had genuinely beaten him quite badly.
If I counted even the parts I could not remember clearly because I had been intoxicated by the gas too, I might really have hit him almost a hundred times.
The evidence was written all over his face and head, which were covered in injuries.
“Then… maybe I won’t do it.”
“Right. Don’t. Just watch. Why risk your life over something like this? There’s still so much more you’ll have to do in the future.”
“All right… if you’re saying it that strongly, I should listen.”
Good.
Joseph gave up.
Doctor Robert Liston showed some disappointment, but since there were still plenty of students left, he did not mind much.
“Aaaah! I won!”
The one who seized victory—in other words, the one who won the punishment of having a tooth pulled—was Colin, unexpectedly enough.
He was about the same size as me, but apparently stubborn as hell.
Or maybe everyone had, on some subconscious level, realized that having a tooth pulled was not actually such a wonderful thing.
“Ah… what a shame.”
“How frustrating!”
Apparently not.
The idiots were all extremely disappointed.
Anyway, with that, the champion Colin lay down on the lecture platform.
Doctor Robert Liston was holding something that looked like a pair of pliers he had obtained from somewhere.
The face of the man holding it and the shape of the tool together…
Is this… torture?
If someone started throwing out lines, I felt like the answers would come spilling out.
Speak!
Tell me!
Wouldn’t even secrets you didn’t know come pouring out?
That was how severe the atmosphere felt—but perhaps only to me, because the others were clapping and cheering like this was some kind of festival.
“Waaah! Colin!”
“Inhale the gas!”
“Open it already, sir!”
Even Colin, lying there, shouted with the veins in his neck bulging red.
At that cry, Doctor Robert Liston—looking like a gladiator from the Colosseum—opened the gas tank with a solemn face.
Then he held it to Colin’s face.
“Inhale… haa.”
Colin also inhaled the gas with a serious expression.
After repeating that several times—after inhaling more than at the party—Colin’s face gradually started to go slack.
His eyes turned unfocused, and drool leaked from his mouth.
It was the face I had seen yesterday.
At that point, I could have hit him and he probably would not have known.
“Say ah—. Hey, stay still!”
Then suddenly Colin started convulsing.
No, he started giggling and laughing.
Stage two out of four…. So that’s the hallucination stage? Calling it a convulsive episode wouldn’t be wrong either.
The others just watched without much thought.
They had no knowledge, so that was only natural.
Even Doctor Robert Liston was the same.
This was an era that did not even really have the concept that one should observe the reaction after administering a drug.
But I, having been thoroughly steeped in modern medicine, could not stand there wearing the same ignorant expression.
All right, next comes anesthesia… and after that, respiratory arrest.
Wasn’t that what Humphry Davy’s records said?
If it had been published in a prestigious academic journal, I could have trusted it outright.
But this was the nineteenth century.
Which meant it was an era where I had to see it for myself to be sure.
So I observed with a tense expression.
I did not like the man, but it would not do for him to die of respiratory arrest.
It has to reach anesthesia for this to be used in surgery later. He mustn’t die.
There were several reasons for that.
First, I was a doctor in name, so I could not simply stand by and watch someone die right in front of me.
Besides, if this fell through, then anesthesia itself might also be finished off for the future, wouldn’t it?
Haah….
If something happened, I would have to stick something into his throat.
The problem was that there were no plastic tubes here.
In that case… I would have to cut.
If I had to perform a tracheotomy, it was not that I lacked confidence.
The problem was how on earth I was supposed to explain it….
“Stay still, you brat!”
At that moment, Doctor Robert Liston smacked Colin, who was in the delusion stage—the second stage of Nitrous Oxide.
“Ugh.”
“Oh, there we go.”
At once, Colin went quiet, as if he had fainted.
Shouldn’t that be a problem?
That looked like he had been knocked unconscious….
“He hasn’t fainted. His eyes are open.”
“Oh.”
Worried, I stepped closer and saw that his eyes were indeed open.
He was still breathing in rough little huffs too.
He definitely had not fainted.
He shoved him into the next stage by hitting him….
A fresh wave of fear and admiration rose in me, and I looked at Robert Liston.
Seeing me like that, Liston said, “Watch carefully. This is the moment we find out whether your idea works or not.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll hold his mouth open for you.”
“Good.”
His eyes were frightening, and the tool was frightening too, so I decided to look only inside Colin’s mouth.
At the same time, I pulled it open as wide as possible.
Given this man’s temperament, if he thought he could not see well, I felt like he might just yank out the front tooth right in front of him.
By chance, I had once seen a doctor with a missing front tooth, and he had looked so foolish he seemed practically one step from retirement.
This bastard was not a good man, but still, I did not think he deserved to have his life ruined over this, so I supposed I was showing him some mercy.
“A little wider. We can’t very well pull a front tooth, can we?”
To say the conclusion first, that fear had been unnecessary.
He was a lunatic willing to pull out a student’s healthy tooth, but he was also enough of a man of principle not to pull a front tooth.
Just as I was about to think I wished he would choose only one of those two traits, the instrument suddenly thrust into Colin’s mouth.
I had assumed he would pull one of the looser teeth, but he really grabbed a molar.
Creak.
He was so strong that it almost felt as if the molar would shatter before it came out.
Rip.
Then he applied force one more time, and the tooth came free.
A gush of red blood followed.
That was a healthy tooth.
A truly healthy tooth.
One that could easily have been used for several more decades.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Huh?”
“Oh.”
After causing such a tragedy, Robert Liston laughed.
It was because Colin truly did not seem to feel pain.
No, far from showing pain, he simply sat there blankly.
It was a miracle.
“Oh!”
At that moment, Robert Liston suddenly dropped to his knees and looked up at the sky.
His hands were neatly clasped together.
Because of that, the instrument and the tooth he had been holding clattered onto the floor.
Even amid the loud clanging, Liston began to pray.
“Thank You, Lord…. At last… the patients have been freed from pain.”
Judging from that sight alone, it was absolutely… absolutely not beautiful.
Colin was bleeding profusely, and beside him lay the rolling instrument and the bloodied tooth.
And Robert Liston looked like nothing less than a butcher.
Yet for some reason, I felt something sacred in it.
This man… he really is a great doctor.
It was because he had not known.
Not because he had done it deliberately.
I could now tell that much for certain.
This man truly cared for his patients.
And that was a relief.
If I stay under him, I’ll be able to do something.